Bigoted pastor's crusade against Islam backfires

Racism flourishes as long as the Northern Executive remains paralysed

First Minister Peter Robinson with members of Muslim community during his visit to the Belfast Islamic Centre in Wellington Park, south Belfast

Over his long career, until it suited him to do a deal that made him First Minister, Paisley bellowed offensive terminology against Roman Catholic churches ("synagogues of Satan"), their members ("infidels" and "idolators") and popes ("anti-Christ"). Since the weakening of the Irish Catholic Church in recent years, evangelical Protestants have found a new threat in the shape of Islam. When McConnell told his congregation that Islam was "heathen", "satanic" and a "doctrine spawned in hell", he was reacting in outrage to the sickening story of Meriam Ibrahim, sentenced in the Sudan to 100 lashes and death for allegedly converting to Christianity. But in a secular and politically correct world, 17th-Century language jars.

After the media ran the story, First Minister Peter Robinson, who attends McConnell's church, stuck up for him. It would have been fine had he said he believed in free speech for all preachers as long as they weren't espousing violence and added the usual guff about immigrants being valued. Instead he was crass. "I wouldn't trust Muslims who are following Sharia Law to the letter and neither would he," he explained. "However, I would have no difficulty in trusting Muslims to go down to the shop for me."

Although Robinson was trying to say that he thought Muslims were honest, the condescending words reminded everyone that he and his disgraced wife Iris (remember the affair with the chap 40 years her junior?) lived in a privileged world. The comments went global and have done serious damage to attempts to sell Northern Ireland as a good place to invest Arab money.

There has been a spike in racial attacks. More race-hate crime was reported in Belfast in 2013 than in the whole province a decade earlier. To put this in context, as has happened in the rest of the UK and in the Republic, levels of immigration have shot up in recent years, and immigrants are mainly located in the poorer areas, whose inhabitants become resentful and sometimes violent.

In Northern Ireland there is the additional problem of young alienated loyalists who are convinced by their leaders and by republican triumphalism that they are the losers in a culture war over flags, parades and other symbols. Anna Lo of the Alliance Party, the only ethnic member of the Assembly – already a target for racists and misogynists – had enraged this group by saying before the last election that she was in favour of a united Ireland. They retaliated with more abuse and an acceleration in their "Everyone-hates-us-but-we-don't-care" public relations strategy.

As Robinson and McConnell apologised too little, too clumsily and too late, Sinn Fein grabbed the opportunity to prance around on the high moral ground. Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness reverentially clutching a copy of the Koran outside the Belfast Islamist Centre while explaining piously that no one had the right to "hate-filled speech" caused an apoplectic reaction from those who remember how SF stirred up sectarian fear and loathing to justify IRA murders.

In an Assembly debate, the able, flinty Jim Allister of the Traditional Unionist Voice party interrupted an unctuous Sinn Fein junior minister with a reminder of the past. "Speaking of outrage and hate crimes, does the minister have any reflection on the hate crime towards foreigner Thomas Niedermayer in his kidnapping or the hate crime of the murder of Jeffrey Agate in Londonderry? What about her own hate crime of shooting a police officer?" Jennifer McCann, who served half her 20-year sentence, responded: "I expect nothing more from you than to try to degenerate this very important debate into what you have just said."

The truth is that the Executive is in a state of near-paralysis, Robinson and McGuinness preserve their fiefdoms by dodging difficult issues, and in the absence of any credible strategies for dealing with sectarianism or racism, the worst elements of society are filling the vacuum.

Pastor McConnell may be a religious nutter but he's a well-meaning soul whose church provides water, food and medical assistance in Ethiopia and Kenya. Unwittingly, he's done Northern Irish Muslims a favour. Their representatives have behaved calmly and graciously and will now almost certainly be rewarded with generous grants to build a bigger and better mosque.